US Green Card Likely To Get Easier For Indians

Now that the White House has supported Congress in passing the EAGLE Act, the US green card process will become easier as some key changes will be made in the law to benefit immigrants. If the bill becomes law, several hundreds of thousands of immigrants, especially Indian-Americans, who have been waiting for green cards for several years now, will be greatly benefited. Here is all you need to know about the new bill.

The EAGLE Act

With the bill, the country-specific green card quota will be abolished, enabling US employers to hire based on merit, not birthplace.

According to the White House, among other provisions, the bill allows individuals who have waited two years for an immigration visa to file green cards.

Although the applications cannot be approved until a visa becomes available, it would allow employment-based immigrants to transition off their temporary visas and give them greater flexibility in changing employers or starting businesses.

EAGLE Act: Why is it important?

Approximately 140,000 employment-based green cards are issued each year under US immigration law. However, only 7% of those green cards can go to individuals from a single country annually, cites FWD.

The excess approvals of a petition are not taken into consideration if a single country sponsors more than 7% of the annual available total.

As a result, these country-specific caps have created extensive backlogs primarily in India and China, which are the main hubs for skilled workers wishing to migrate to the US.

As quoted by the White House, “the administration supports efforts to improve our immigrant visa system and reduce the effects of the immigrant visa backlog.”

Furthermore, the White House emphasized that the bill would also ensure that children of employment-based immigrants do not age out of dependent status or lose their eligibility for a green card.

There are over 880,000 people waiting for employment-based green cards in the U.S., including their dependent spouses and children. The FWA says some applicants who began the process in 2012 are now able to apply formally, meaning they may have waited more than a decade before joining their families, even though they were already qualified to do so. If the law does not change, this wait time will increase to 50 years.

According to the White House, immigrants have contributed to key sectors of the US economy and strengthened America’s most valuable competitive advantage, its spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship.